The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

Monday, December 14, 2015

LOL. An unenforceable agreement to do the impossible!

The Greenies are right about the climate agreement just signed in Paris. They think it's a crock. It is.

1. A long-term goal to limit global warming to 2C, or 1.5C if possible

2. National pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the 2020s

3. A plan to make countries pledge deeper emissions cuts in future, improving their plans every five years

4. Rich nations to provide funding to poorer ones – ‘mobilising’ $100bn a year until 2025, and more thereafter

5. A plan to monitor progress and hold countries to account

It's all just an expression of intentions with the only definite goal being to limit global warming. But they have no means of doing that. Warming does not track CO2 and they have made no firm committments to control CO2 anyway. And since the warming has already stopped the goal is pointless. You can't close a door that is already closed! And most of the goals are nicely in the future when most of the signatories will be hors de combat

And it has no enforcement mechanism anyway

There were tears of joy as delegates finally agreed to the world's first comprehensive climate agreement after two weeks of negotiations in Paris.

The Paris Agreement was passed with no objections by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, bringing to an end four years' of discussion and debate.

Nearly 200 nations adopted the global pact, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution - but imposing no sanctions on countries that don't.

To a reception of whoops and cheers, Laurent Fabius told the hall: 'I now invite the COP [conference of the parties] to adopt the decision. I see no objections. The Paris agreement is adopted.'

The plenary hall then rose to give him a standing ovation.

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said: 'I used to say we must, we can, we will - today we can say we did.'

The first draft of the 'historic' legally binding agreement had been reached around midday.

The report confirmed countries - if they accept the 31-page draft - will be expected to work towards limiting global warming to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

However, the agreement took several more hours to reach - with one western diplomat revealing it was held up for two hours by the U.S., which was unhappy with one word.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. wants the word 'shall' changed to 'should' in a clause on emissions targets out of fears that it might require the Obama administration to seek approval from the Republican-controlled Senate.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the universal climate deal agreed in Paris 'means that the whole world has signed to play its part in halting climate change', adding: 'It's a moment to remember and a huge step forward in helping to secure the future of our planet.'

President Barack Obama tweeted: 'This is huge: Almost every country in the world just signed on to the on climate change—thanks to American leadership.'

Kevin Watkins, executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, said: 'It is a tough message to deliver after two weeks of intense negotiations that have delivered an ambitious deal, but the challenge governments are facing can be summarised in five words – 'now for the hard part'.'

Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace praised the accord was a good start but isn't enough.

'Today the human race has joined in a common cause, but it's what happens after this conference that really matters,' he said. 'This deal alone won't dig us out the hole we're in, but it makes the sides less steep.'

But Friends of the Earth said it was a 'disaster'.

In a statement released by the group, they said: 'The draft Paris agreement puts us on track for a planet three degrees hotter than today. This would be a disaster.

'The reviews in this agreement are too weak and too late. The finance figures have no bearing on the scale of need. It's empty.'

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, added: 'It's outrageous that the deal that's on the table is being spun as a success when it undermines the rights of the world's most vulnerable communities and has almost nothing binding to ensure a safe and liveable climate for future generations.'

The trillion pound bill: That's what this respected expert says the climate summit may cost the world each year. And yet, he argues, it will hardly change a thing

By Bjorn Lomborg

As you might expect, the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, which reached an agreement yesterday to limit the rise in global temperature to less than 2C, has been an international festival of hot air.

The bland, suburban conference centre hosting the two weeks of talks is populated by oversized animal cut-outs – a blue giraffe, a red camel – that we attendees use as landmarks to find our way around.

You hear people shouting into their phone, ‘I’m waiting by the pink kangaroo!’ But the outwardly cheerful menagerie is actually a Noah’s Ark installation designed to remind delegates of the perils of inaction. Woe to the pink kangaroo if the delegates fail to halt global warming.

Even the ‘welcome bags’ are worthy, made out of politically correct recycled cloth.

Our French hosts are quick to point out that their government will purchase ‘carbon offsets’ – somewhere a lot of trees will be planted – to balance the environmental damage caused by this massive talkfest.

Within limits, of course. Though there are an astonishing 40,000 people here (30,000 more than recent conferences), the French will ‘offset’ the emissions of just 22,000 official delegates. The other 18,000 should presumably plant their own trees.

The first two days belonged to politicians, and were dominated by lofty rhetoric. Nearly 150 world leaders gathered, delivering speeches that were fairly interchangeable: there was much talk of ‘ambition’ and ‘the next generation’.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe stood out, lambasting the West for causing global warming, and declaring that Africa would not cut its carbon emissions.

Then, soundbites duly issued, the leaders jetted home, leaving hundreds of national delegates bustling from meeting to press conference to side event, and activists exhorting them via press releases to commit to ever-bigger carbon cuts.

Yet after two weeks of negotiations about rising temperatures, the main thing that has risen is expectations. When a deal couldn’t be reached, the conference was extended into ‘extra time’. Delegates talked around the clock, agreeing the fine print for an agreement that will commit the world to massive economic costs while doing very little for the environment.

In a peer-reviewed research paper based on pre-conference pledges, I measured the environmental impact of every nation fulfilling every carbon-cutting promise between 2016 and 2030. I found that the total temperature reduction will be just 0.048C by 2100.

Even if we assume that every one of these promises would not only be fulfilled but extended for another 70 years (and countries don’t just import more products from carbon polluting nations) then all the promises made in Paris will reduce temperature rises by 0.17C by 2100. This is very similar to a finding by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.

Much higher figures have been bandied about by activists, delegates and even the United Nations’ global-warming body, the UNFCCC.

The problem is that such claims are based on a wholly unrealistic scenario where governments do little now, then embark on incredibly ambitious and unlikely climate change reduction policies after 2030.

This is vanishingly unlikely. The only global treaty to agree a cut in carbon emissions – the Kyoto Protocol – failed when it was never ratified by the US, and eventually abandoned by Canada, Russia and Japan. In the 1990s and early 2000s, we learned that the only surefire way to make substantial emissions cuts was to go through a major economic recession.

Emissions dropped precipitously when the Soviet Union collapsed, and again during the 2008 financial crisis. Understandably, this approach is not very popular with politicians or voters.

But still the politicians make lofty carbon-cutting promises. And what they don’t talk about is the cost. In Paris you won’t hear it mentioned that this is likely to be the most expensive treaty in the history of the world. If you try to cut carbon dioxide, even with an efficient carbon tax, you end up making cheap energy more expensive and this slows economic growth.

Energy-economic models, including the gold standard Stanford University Energy Modelling Forum, show the EU’s GDP will have grown 1.6 per cent less by 2030.
Dishing out solar panels is feeble - even immoral

That means the Paris agreement will cost Europe £200 billion in lost GDP every year by 2030 – and this is if the EU enacts its regulations most efficiently. Otherwise the cost could double to £400 billion a year. For the United Kingdom, that could mean £50 billion lost every year. And for the world, this bill could run from £600 billion to £1.2 trillion per year.

Why so expensive? Because current green technology is inefficient. If it were economically advantageous to dump fossil fuels, why would we need to sign a treaty? Every right-thinking nation on the planet would stampede to cut CO2.

There has been much focus in Paris on the £65 billion committed to ‘climate aid’. This includes £4 billion from the UK. Much of that money – including the UK’s portion – is coming from cash intended for global development. Yet climate aid is a feeble response to global challenges.

Concerned about agriculture? Then invest directly in agricultural research and better farming technologies, not subsidising inefficient wind turbines.

Worried about ‘extreme weather’ events? These hit the poor the hardest: helping people out of poverty is a thousand times more effective than relying on carbon cuts.

Nor is climate aid what the world’s poor want. A global poll of 9.7 million people shows that the citizens of the world’s poorest countries say climate action is their lowest policy priority, behind education, healthcare, jobs and governmental reform.

When two billion people suffer from some form of malnourishment, and it is an underlying cause of death of 2.6 million children each year, 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty, and 2.4 billion lack clean drinking water and sanitation, then dishing out solar panels is a feeble – and even immoral – response.

We can help them better, cheaper and more effectively.

However there has been some good news from Paris – and it has nothing to do with the agreement. It’s something that was announced on the sidelines on the first day, when Microsoft founder Bill Gates, other wealthy individuals and about 20 governments revealed that they will double green energy research and development.

This could put us on a pathway towards finally solving global warming. A huge increase in spending on research and development is the most efficient way to find new breakthrough energy technologies cheaper than fossil fuels.

When the thousands of Paris attendees meet again for a review, maybe they will realise that they should forget about their futile policies that throw away trillions of pounds in lost input and invest instead in something with a real chance of working – innovation.

But Obama still wants to send US energy use and living standards backward

Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

Paris climate talks became frenzied, as delegates desperately tried to salvage an agreement beyond empty promises to do something sometime about what President Obama insists is the gravest threat to our planet, national security and future generations.

Determined for once to lead from upfront, he took a 500-person greenhouse gas-spewing entourage to the City of Light, to call for preventing increasing droughts, floods, storms, island-swallowing rising acidic ocean levels, and other disasters conjured up by alarmist computer models.

Legally binding carbon dioxide emission targets were too contentious to pursue. So was modifying “differentiated responsibilities,” the notion that countries which historically caused the recent atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up must lead in cutting their emissions, while helping developing countries eventually do likewise, by pouring trillions of dollars in cash and free technology into the Green Climate Fund for supposed adaptation and compensation. Developing countries had insisted on that massive wealth redistribution as their price for signing any binding document.

Although China now emits far more CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) than the USA or EU, it refused to fast-track reducing those emissions. China and wealthy petro-states also opposed paying into the Climate Fund. Other major bones of contention were likewise never resolved.

Thus, in the end, what we got out of Paris is voluntary emission caps, voluntary progress reviews, no international oversight or enforcement of voluntary progress, and voluntary contributions to the Fund.

Of course, the entire climate cataclysm mantra is based on the claim that carbon dioxide has replaced the solar and other powerful natural forces that have driven climate change throughout Earth and human history. Now, merely tweaking CO2 emissions will supposedly stabilize climate and weather systems.

President Obama fervently believes this delusion. He will likely use the Paris gobbledygook to say America somehow has a “moral obligation” to set an example, by de-carbonizing, de-energizing, de-industrializing and de-developing the United States. Thankfully, Congress and the states will have something to say about that, because they know more anti-fossil fuel edicts will destroy jobs and living standards, especially for poor, working class and minority families.

The impacts would be far worse than many news stories and White House press releases suggest. Those sources often say the proposed climate treaty sought seek GHG reductions of 80% below predicted 2050 emission levels. The real target proposed by the White House, EU, Germany and Britain was 80% or more below actual 1990 levels by 2050.

Those targets meant the world would have to eliminate some 95% of the greenhouse gases that all humanity would likely release if we reach world population levels, economic growth and living standards projected for 2050. The United States would likely have to slash its CO2 and GHG reductions to zero.

Moreover, current 2050 forecasts already assume and incorporate significant energy efficiency, de-carbonization and de-industrialization over the next 35 years. They are not business-as-usual numbers or extrapolations of past trends. Further fossil fuel and CO2 reductions beyond those already incorporated into the forecasts would thus be increasingly difficult, expensive, and indeed impossible to achieve.

As we explain in our MasterResource.org analysis, there is a strong positive relationship between GDP and carbon-based energy consumption. Slashing fossil energy use that far would thus require decimating economic growth, job creation and preservation, and average per-person incomes. In fact, average world per capita GDP would plummet from a projected $30,600 in 2050 to a miserable $1,200 per year.

Average per capita GDP in 2050 would be less than what Americans had in 1830! Many futuristic technologies might still exist, but only wealthy families and ruling elites could afford them.

That would be catastrophic for jobs, health and welfare in developed countries – and lethal to millions in poor nations, who would be denied the blessings of electricity and fossil fuels for decades to come. That is indefensible, inhumane and immoral. And for what?

Mr. Obama and the Paris alarmists insisted that drastic GHG reductions will hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.5 F) above pre-industrial, post-Little Ice Age levels, since 1860. We’re already halfway to that. And now some even claim the upper safety limit is 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F), which would require even more draconian energy and emission cutbacks. Otherwise we face climate and weather calamities, they insist. It’s utter nonsense.

EPA’s own analyses suggest that its fully implemented Clean Power Plan would bring an undetectable, irrelevant reduction of perhaps 0.02 degrees Celsius (0.05 F) in average global temperatures 85 years from now – assuming carbon dioxide actually does drive climate change.

In the Real World, climate changes regularly, and recent climate and weather trends and events are in line with historic experience. In fact, average global temperatures haven’t risen in nearly two decades; no category 3-5 hurricane has struck the USA in a record ten years; Greenland and Antarctic ice are at record levels; and still firmly alkaline sea levels (8.1 pH) are rising at barely seven inches per century.

Many scientists believe the sun and other powerful natural forces may soon usher in a new era of colder temperatures, regardless of whether atmospheric CO2 rises above 0.04% (400 ppm). That would pose much greater threats to human health, agriculture and prosperity (and wildlife) than global warming.

Never forget: Fossil fuels facilitated successive industrial revolutions and enabled billions to live better than royalty did a century ago, average incomes to increase eleven-fold, and helped average global life expectancy to soar from less than 30 in 1870 to 71 today.

Carbon-based energy still provides 81% of world energy, and supports $70 trillion per year in world GDP. It will supply 75-80% of global energy for decades to come, Energy Information Administration, International Energy Agency and other studies forecast. Carbon-based energy is essential if we are to bring electricity to the 1.3 billion people who still do not have it, and end the rampant poverty and lung, intestinal and other diseases that kill millions of people in poor countries every year.

Furthermore, thousands of coal-fired power plants are built, under construction or in planning around the world. China and India will not consider reducing GHG emissions until 2030, and even then it will be voluntary and dependent on how their economies are doing. That means atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb, greening the planet and spurring faster crop, forest and grassland growth.

President Obama and the 40,000 climate alarmists gathered in Paris ignored these inconvenient realities, and whitewashed the adverse consequences of anti-hydrocarbon policies. Even binding targets would have minimal or illusory health, climate and environmental benefits.

Instead, they would have horrendous adverse effects on human health and environmental quality, while doing nothing to prevent climate change or extreme weather events. What alarmists wanted in Paris would let unelected, unaccountable activists and bureaucrats decide which industries, companies, workers, families, states and countries win the Climate Hustle game, and which ones lose.

And it’s not just President Obama. He wants to slash America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 – and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050! Every Democrat presidential candidate demands similar actions: Hillary Clinton wants one-third of all US electricity to come from wind and solar by 2027; Bernie Sanders wants 50% by 2030; Martin O’Malley wants 100% by 2050.

Obligating the United States to slash its fossil fuel use, and send billions of taxpayer dollars annually to dictators, bureaucrats and crony industrialists in poor countries would be disastrous. Thank goodness it did not happen. But we are not out of the woods yet.

Via email

Scientists criticize climate agreement

The researchers — including Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester and a major critic of unrealistic assumptions about how easily the world can limit warming to below 3.6 degrees — were reacting to the latest draft agreement text, released late Thursday.

The document embraces a goal of limiting warming to well below 3.6 degrees above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 2.7 degrees —a strengthening of goals that many scientists and also vulnerable nations have applauded.

But the text goes on to say that this will be achieved through capping greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, followed by "rapid reductions thereafter towards reaching greenhouse gas emissions neutrality in the second half of the century."

It is the second part of this that drew the scientists’ ire. It’s not clear that a mere peaking "as soon as possible," or "greenhouse gas emissions neutrality" thereafter, will be enough to hit the most ambitious climate targets, they suggested.

Rather, the researchers said, to stay within a given temperature threshold, emissions have to be taken to zero — a word that does not appear in the current text — and for 2.7 degrees in particular, they need to be cut rapidly and immediately.

The current text is "not consistent with science," said Anderson.

"The frustration as a scientist at this point is that once you set that global planetary guardrail, everything else must be consistent with that target," added Steffen Kallbekken, research director for the Climate Economics Unit at the University of Oslo.

Kallbekken, Anderson, and the other scientists suggested that the language about "greenhouse gas neutrality" could open up a massive door to so-called "negative emissions" technologies that could theoretically remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, even as humans keep on emitting it.

If we emit too much carbon dioxide to stay within a given temperature target, meanwhile, negative emissions technologies might theoretically cool the planet back down again, allowing for a temporary overshoot without too much lasting planetary harm.

However, scientists have recently been highly critical of assumptions that we can launch these technologies on a mass scale without suffering major side effects, such as using vast amounts of land that might otherwise be used to grow food.

At the panel on Friday, Anderson suggested that relying on these technologies may lead us to believe in "spurious options for the future."

Another researcher present, Joeri Rogelj, a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, is one of the few scientists to have published a study on precisely what it would take to keep warming below 2.7 degrees in the long term.

The current draft text’s language about "greenhouse gas neutrality," he said, "kind of obscures the fact that global carbon dioxide emissions will have to become zero to stabilize warming at any level."

Rogelj said the world must start reducing emissions by 2020 or earlier to meet the goals. But the current draft’s call for merely peaking emissions "as soon as possible" leaves vast wiggle room.

The researchers praised the inclusion of a 2.7 degree temperature increase in the current text, along with the idea of holding warming well below 3.6 degrees. And they emphasized that the current text could change again by Saturday, perhaps in the direction they’re hoping for — but also perhaps becoming weaker.

"It’s incredibly positive that world political leadership has now recognized the science," said Kallbekken. "It has to then stay scientifically consistent right through."

In his opening statements, President Barack Obama claimed that “there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.”

In the midst of such self-induced high-pressure politics and the alleged immediacy of the situation, here are a few numbers to keep in mind.

An Arbitrary Goal: 2 Degrees Celsius

The U.N.’s stated goal of the Paris conference is “to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius” from preindustrial levels. But as the Wall Street Journal reports and others have pointed out well before the Paris talks, many scientists—including those who believe we are facing catastrophic global warming—find the benchmark of 2 degrees Celsius arbitrary.

Professor of climatology at University College London Mark Maslin said, “It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis. It’s not a sensible, rational target because the models give you a range of possibilities, not a single answer.”

In other words, the entire premise of the conference is faulty.

$100 Billion (or More)-per-Year Climate Fund

A major sticking point leading up to and during the Paris climate conference has been a Green Climate Fund that would collect $100 billion per year by 2020 to subsidize green energy and pay for other climate adaptation and mitigation programs in developing nations.

Only $10.2 billion has been pledged so far ($3 billion has been promised by Obama), but that’s already $10.2 billion too much.

World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change Rachel Kyte said that “the $100 billion was picked out of the air at Copenhagen.”

Executive secretary for the U.N.’s climate change conventions Christiana Figueres has further admitted that the $100 billion is merely a proxy to win the trust of developing countries and that “we are talking here about trillions of dollars that need to flow into the transformation at a global level.”

Amount of Warming Since 1998: Almost None

Even as global carbon dioxide emissions have increased, warming has plateaued. Most scientists would agree that the Earth has experience some warming over the past century, but there is little agreement as to how much is attributable to human activity or if warming is even harmful. An analysis by Judith Curry comparing five data sets of actual global temperatures found that all but one showed that global warming is on a break.

However, climate models have predicted far more warming than has actually happened in the past 18 years. If models have been unable to accurately project climate conditions ten years out, how can even longer-term projections be depended upon to make good policy decisions?

Number of Coal Power Plants Planned Around the World: 2,440

A December report by four climate institutes found that far from decreasing in number, over 2,000 coal power plants are planned around the world in developing and industrialized nations. And for good reason—coal remains an efficient, affordable, and reliable resource to generate electricity.

It’s worth noting, too, that modern American coal power plants aren’t the plants of a century ago (or like the ones in China today) and can filter out 90 percent of mercury emissions and 99.8 percent of soot.

Too many politicians appear out of touch with reality, though. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has suggested that “fossil fuel power generation without [carbon capture and sequestration be] phased out almost entirely by 2100” to mitigate warming.

To this end, the Obama administration’s emissions reduction commitment to cut 28 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 further stated that this was only a “pathway … to deep, economy-wide emission reductions of 80 percent or more by 2050.”

Amount of Warming Avoided by the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan: 0.02 Degrees Celsius Over the Next 85 Years

The Clean Power Plan is at the heart of Obama’s U.N. climate commitment. But regardless of one’s opinion of global warming, the Clean Power Plan does next to nothing to reduce global temperatures.

Models created by the Environmental Protection Agency show that the climate impact of the Clean Power Plan is less than 0.02 degrees Celsius in warming avoided over the next 85 years. Meanwhile, it will be extremely costly to American families and businesses, and particularly so for the poor Midwestern states, which rely more heavily on coal for electricity, and the manufacturing sector, which is on the threshold of renewed growth brought on by the oil and gas revolution.

Obama has maneuvered to avoid Senate ratification of a treaty. But regardless of one’s position on global warming, the Paris climate agreement is shortsighted and a bad deal for Americans and the world’s most vulnerable.

NASA Meteorologist and member of the Johnson Space Center Climate Group (Ret.), Tom Wysmuller (photo) was interviewed in New York by Celestin Ngoa Balla for the weekly Cameroon newspaper Journal Integration.

Q: Mr Wysmuller: When did you start investigating the global climate change phenomenon and what evidence do you have to convince our readers of the seriousness, of the rigour of your work?

Thomas Wysmuller: I’ve always had a love for Meteorology, studied it in school, and forecasted weather at the Royal Dutch Weather Bureau in Amsterdam, before working at NASA before, during, and after the Moon Landings. Mathematics I helped develop while assigned to work at Jet Engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney is being used by most climate scientists all over the world. In the late 1990s I started lecturing on formation of the Ice Ages; ergo the copyright on The Colder Side of Global Warming. I continue doing so to this day, and am part of the NASA: The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) group centered at the Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.

Q: At a recent conference in New York, you stated that after the Paris Summit on climate change, the planet will go back to the stone age. Can you demonstrate that to our readers?

Thomas Wysmuller: The context of that assertion was that we would revert to Stone Age conditions if every proposal, change, and energy destroying wish list item would be enacted as a result of the Paris COP21 conference. It would mean that inexpensive coal generated electricity would be barred in Africa. Third World nations would be limited to non-utility scale wind and solar power generation. Africa, South America, and Central America would never develop continent-wide electrical grids, nor would be permitted to develop their own natural resources. I could go on, but hopefully you are getting the idea!

Q: In the same vein, you are also ringing the alarm bell that behind the Paris summit lies the real agenda of some of the great powers and of some notorious people: reducing Earth’s population. What are your reasons to make such a statement?

Thomas Wysmuller: Once inexpensive electrical power is denied to those most needing it, diseases will continue taking their toll in the Third World, decent drinking water will remain in short supply and delivery systems for it will remain substandard compared to Europe and North America.

Keep in mind that there are some truly misguided but well-meaning people believing they are doing environmental good involved in COP21. But others want to keep the Third World poor and relying on “handouts” from the so-called “developed world.”

Even our own (in my view “poor choice” as) president has declared that: “Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over—unless we find new ways of producing energy”.

Now this is simply false. The planet will never “…boil over,” unless new laws of physics get invented. But keeping Africa poor will result in more deaths resulting from not “…raising living standards.”

And you should not have to wait for someone else to “…find new ways of producing energy.” What if they don’t? Does that mean that you and your descendants should wallow in poverty?

Do NOT take our president’s statement as what the American people want for your country.

For me, I would like to see every African of driving age able to 1: Have one or two cars, 2: Have a decent road system upon which to drive them, 3: Have Air Conditioning, 4: Have a big house or elegant apartment, 5: Have a job making, selling, or distributing things like Air Conditioners, Cars, Farm Equipment, or teaching others how to do just that, and all those things that make life pleasant and a lifestyle you can be proud of.

Q: Can you explain your statement that “global warming is not an issue that concerns Africa”?

Thomas Wysmuller: To begin: The planet’s atmosphere has not warmed for almost two decades, and that includes Africa.

If we look at the total emissions of CO2 produced by man since 1750, we find that one third of these emissions occurred in only the last 18 years and 9 months. However, the most reliable measurements of the Earth’s surface temperature obtained by satellites show no indication of global warming over this period. There is no evidence to support the claims that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing a sudden, dangerous change in the Earth’s climate.

I pose the following question from time to time: Pick any day of the year, any season. Add two degrees. Notice any difference? Enjoy life. Save $Billions that your government wants to spend or divert on this foolishness.

A small fraction of those same “$Billions” could develop a power grid across all of Africa, provide cheap, reliable and clean coal-fired electricity for all. CO2 additions would benefit the planet, allowing more rapid plant and crop growth, while CO, Carbon particles, and real pollutants would be controlled with modern engineering techniques.

A competent Physicist or Meteorologist would let you know that equatorial regions of Earth would radiate most of that added heat into space – the colder regions would warm, but not enough to cause major ice depletion. Recent evidence points to Antarctica gaining so much more ice/snow so as to drop world sea levels by 0.23mm each year. Truly, “global warming is not an issue that concerns Africa” Economic impoverishment most certainly is!

Q: Should we fear the return of colonialism particularly in Africa?

Thomas Wysmuller: Under real colonialism, you knew from whom you wanted to be liberated. However, “economic subjugation” is likely even more insidious than that of your past colonial experience.

Keeping Africa from utilizing your own natural resources, keeping you without reliable power, denying you a decent transportation infrastructure to move goods throughout the continent, or even withholding reliable electrical power to make those goods, is true repression.

DON’T LET IT HAPPEN TO YOU!!!

Q: The Paris Summit organizers think that the growth of jihadism and wars in Africa is linked to global warming. What do you think?

Thomas Wysmuller: The recent unrest in the world and attacks in Paris “feed” this kind of thinking. In truth, poverty and lack of food and water are the “fuel” for jihadism. This results in destabilization attempts directed towards governments who are unable to “cure” these societal ills. If reliable electricity would power desalinization plants and provide water for agriculture and industry, the attractiveness for regime destruction relied upon by jihadists would dissipate.

Q: Is there a relationship between the warming of the oceans and the emissions of CO2?

Thomas Wysmuller: Absolutely! As the oceans warm, they release the heavier dissolved CO2 molecules contained within them. In fact they are responsible for almost all of the CO2 emissions added to the atmosphere every year. Humans account for less than 4%, and half of that is re-absorbed by either plants or the oceans each year!!!

Q: What advice would you give to the African heads of state that have already accepted the invitation to go to the Paris Summit? Should they refuse to sign the protocol to impose a worldwide climate policy?

Thomas Wysmuller: Go to the Paris Summit. Do NOT give up your nation’s right to explore for, extract, utilize and develop your natural resources.

Review any technical assistance offered, but have your own scientists that have high integrity, analyze any offers and accept only those that: 1: Give your nation capability that it doesn/t presently have, 2: Contribute to your own energy independence, 3: Grant meaningful employment for your people, 4: Improve your nation’s infrastructure, and 5: Allow you to increase your nation’s competitiveness in all aspects of world trade. There are many more in addition to these 5, but starting with these, your heads of state will earn their right to remain in their positions.

And yes, they should absolutely refuse to sign the protocol as it has been described to me. Signing will guarantee permanent mediocrity for those African nations that are tricked into supporting the protocol.

Q: And what message do you have for the African population who, not long ago, heard Barack Obama tell them that it is dangerous for the planet that every house should have electricity?

Thomas Wysmuller: Tell Barack Obama to cut power to the US White House 20 times per day, sell his jet plane Air Force One, and get rid of the cars that he rides in on the way to golf courses on a weekly basis. When all of those happen, then consider that you might not want every house having electricity, and decide that his house will be the only one in that category.

Q: Nonetheless, the phenomenon of global warming is not a myth. And you are saying that it has some good advantages such as creating jobs?

Thomas Wysmuller: We are in a 2 degree C plus and minus temperature band for the past 10,000 years! 300 years ago we were cooling. 100 years ago we started warming again. We are still in that 2 degree C range, and not anywhere near the top of that range.

Add atmospheric CO2 and plants grow more and need less water to do so. Satellite imagery of the Sahel region of Africa shows greening during the 20 years after the satellites were first put in orbit. If there is any myth, it is that of taking just the past 100 years of temperature change and insisting that it will go on forever. Over 100 climate models have failed to accurately project the Earth’s atmospheric temperature – and all but 3 failed on the high side because of CO2 increase assumptions and feedbacks built into the modeler’s assumptions.

Jobs will follow as a result of NOT following the proposed resource development restrictions that some would impose upon your country and delight in your continued subservience. I’m not one of them!!!

Q: The way things are going right now, some scientists fear an increase of floods, cyclones and other natural catastrophes. Can you comment?

Thomas Wysmuller: Those scientists to whom you refer just are not keeping up with reality. I cannot apologize for their ignorance, but hopefully they can. There is a concept called “Accumulated Cyclonic Energy” (ACE) and it is tracked worldwide. It takes the energy components of storms wind speed, storm duration measured in 6-hour intervals, and area covered. This ACE statistic trend is tracked, and for the past 15 years the trend is down, and decidedly so, even as CO2 has risen.

Hurricanes, Cyclones, Typhoons, etc., are within their historic ranges though not fewer in number, but this is likely due to better satellite tracking of these systems. In areas where there is high accuracy in storm tracking, such as the United States, numbers of Tornadoes in all categories are either diminished or flat, none increasing!

Please keep in mind that the “catastrophes” referred to are all “Weather” related, not “Climate” related, as “Climate” is the result of very long term changes in the averages of many meteorological factors, and CO2 is not the major one involved.

Q: What can explain that two weeks before the Paris summit, the conclusions of your work and your observations are not well-known around the world? Are there some people that don’t want your voice to be heard?

Thomas Wysmuller: Many highly regarded and recognized scientists with world class reputations share my outlook and have similar opinions. I give lectures, talks and presentations all over the world, and those conclusions that I have arrived at with others are actually quite well known.

I am sure there are some that “…don’t want your (my) voice to be heard,” but those are the actions of fear; fear that they will be exposed as less than competent, and have to defend policies that damage the very people and nations that they pretend to be helping.

Q: Can you tell us why you are not afraid to oppose the powerful nations and powerful people (including even the Pope) who are involved in promoting this climate change agenda? They say that that there is a danger! Are you trying to tell us that the right of all nations to develop, the need to create jobs, and the need for science to be truthful, is more important than fear?

Thomas Wysmuller: Absolutely!!! And there is no “climate danger” to worry about but there is a very real danger that lack of development, poverty, and lack of economic opportunity present to your country and the world!

I have easily developed a lack of fear with respect to my positions, as they are grounded in hard science, accurate data, and a structured approach in problem solving that I learned during my days at NASA. Over the years I have applied my Meteorological, Mathematical, and Earth Sciences background to my presentations, and acquired an understanding of climate, and Ice-Age formation.

I believe my “advice” to the developing world will actually allow them to DEVELOP!!! Rise to the level that brings the best lifestyle, medical health, and prosperity that you can hope for and then benefit all of humanity!!! When your nation’s intelligence and intellect is focused on becoming equal partners in the world, the rest of the world’s nations will welcome your inclusion in mainstream economic progress, and I not only look forward to that day, but will work hard to convince others to help you achieve it.

I thank you for your work in communicating my viewpoints to your country’s leaders and your general readership. Political decisions based upon sound science and correct information are the recipe for national achievement, and I wish you the very best in attaining that success!!!

Preserving the graphics: Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere. But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases. After that they no longer come up. From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site. See here or here

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Background

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.
Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is
maximum 4%.

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here .....